I manage to get great playback with SUPER SMASH BROS BRAWL, 97% of the speed most of the time. If I battle only against one other CPU, the game plays at almost 100% all of the time. Either way, game play is great, wonderful image and great response, practically ZERO lag.

So, I tried to update my dolphin to the new 4.0.1 and the result was AWFUL. Didn't matter if it were my settings, recommended or default ones, the game play was, so to say, disgusting. The video lagged all the time and the audio crippled. Four player battle: 50 ~ 75% game speed.

What I don't understand is why is the newer version of Dolphin playing so bad on my notebook? Is it me, the settings of is the 4.0.1 version worse than its predecessor 3.5.125?

I'm not sure this is the right place to post, if not, please move my thread to the correct category.

I may be incorrect but my understanding is that the newer versions of Dolphin are more intensive than the older versions for numerous reasons, one of which being accuracy. Essentially your laptop is just not powerful enough to handle all of the improved updates to Dolphin since 3.5 (my guess is that your CPU isn't quite fast enough...at least not for the game you are trying to play). The biggest thing I think you may be suffering from is the new AX-HLE which synchronizes the audio and video together so if your CPU cant handle the game then the audio lags with it. 3.5 (at least 125 and earlier, did not have this upgrade).

That being said, Why do you have these on?
[x] OpenCL Texture Decoder
[x] OpenMP Texture Decoder
[x] V-sync

Try turning them off. Also try disabling any AA if you have it set.

Additionally, this option only applies to LLE so you can uncheck it since you are using HLE:
[x] DSP LLE on Thread

One last thing. I dont play this game, but is this option really needed?
[x] Lock Threads to Cores

Make sure you're on AC power and set to high performance power profile mode. The newer versions are more demanding and it may be that you are not fully utilizing your hardware because the low performance level sufficed under 3.5. Make sure you're using HLE and not LLE. You don't have the juice for LLE.

Or you can try the Unofficial Dx9-Final Version.
Its working really great on my laptop, and I had similar performance issues with several games.
My laptop specs: i3-2350M nvidia 520m 1gb and 4gigs of RAM.

(10-29-2013, 03:30 AM)haddockd Wrote: I may be incorrect but my understanding is that the newer versions of Dolphin are more intensive than the older versions for numerous reasons, one of which being accuracy. Essentially your laptop is just not powerful enough to handle all of the improved updates to Dolphin since 3.5 (my guess is that your CPU isn't quite fast enough...at least not for the game you are trying to play). The biggest thing I think you may be suffering from is the new AX-HLE which synchronizes the audio and video together so if your CPU cant handle the game then the audio lags with it. 3.5 (at least 125 and earlier, did not have this upgrade).

That being said, Why do you have these on?
[x] OpenCL Texture Decoder
[x] OpenMP Texture Decoder
[x] V-sync

Try turning them off. Also try disabling any AA if you have it set.

Additionally, this option only applies to LLE so you can uncheck it since you are using HLE:
[x] DSP LLE on Thread

One last thing. I dont play this game, but is this option really needed?
[x] Lock Threads to Cores

I expected that newer versions would improve emulation and make the gameplay better, not worse. Also, about the configuration, I have tested every one of the graphic ones, on and off, and seen improvements the way they are. The other ones, I'm not sure.

Mostly, I guess the emulator is still bad at using all of the CPU's capacity, since I only get 50 ~ 60% usage (seems it cannot use the hyper threading).

(10-29-2013, 03:53 AM)rokclimb15 Wrote: Make sure you're on AC power and set to high performance power profile mode. The newer versions are more demanding and it may be that you are not fully utilizing your hardware because the low performance level sufficed under 3.5. Make sure you're using HLE and not LLE. You don't have the juice for LLE.

Thanks for the advice, but I would have seen that much sooner. I am using HLE, and the PC is set to balanced mode. There is no difference setting it to high performance, since both are configured to use 100% of CPU.

(10-29-2013, 05:00 AM)Larsenic Wrote: Or you can try the Unofficial Dx9-Final Version.
Its working really great on my laptop, and I had similar performance issues with several games.
My laptop specs: i3-2350M nvidia 520m 1gb and 4gigs of RAM.

Now I am able to play Zelda TP at 80 - 100% speed at 1.5x native res.

I might try that.

I'm really disappointed with DOLPHIN. Instead of using less CPU for gameplay, it seems to want more and more at every update. I guess it's impossible to want it any other way, since it would require a whole new emulation process in order to use less computer resources.

1st your Intel Core i5-3210M is slow enough as it is to expect full speed. second Dolphin & pretty much EVERY game & emulators currently dont use hyper threading considering they are all single or dual-threaded by nature ( explains why u arnt maxing your cpu)

dont be dissatisfied because dolphin has gotten more accurate. Accuracy takes a major hit out of the speed department & i doubt therell ever be a way to make it use less resources unless nintendo themselves hands them the indeph specs & code.

if the games ur playing are already working as intended i would stick to the older rev. & dont use LLE at all unless the game needs it. Its a major hog on the cpu

(11-03-2013, 11:20 AM)noslian99 Wrote: I expected that newer versions would improve emulation and make the gameplay better, not worse. Also, about the configuration, I have tested every one of the graphic ones, on and off, and seen improvements the way they are. The other ones, I'm not sure.

Mostly, I guess the emulator is still bad at using all of the CPU's capacity, since I only get 50 ~ 60% usage (seems it cannot use the hyper threading).

I'm really disappointed with DOLPHIN. Instead of using less CPU for gameplay, it seems to want more and more at every update. I guess it's impossible to want it any other way, since it would require a whole new emulation process in order to use less computer resources.

The newer revisions improve compatibility and accuracy, not necessarily speed (the inverse is normally true). I am sorry you are experiencing slow downs with Dolphin but you have to understand that isnt Dolphin's fault. I experience almost no slow downs in any games. But my system is fairly powerful. You have to change your mindset a little and lower your expectations because your rig is weak for quite a few titles. I am not saying this as inflammatory but to help you understand that emulation takes a very strong CPU in most cases and you, unfortunately, do not have that.

About the percentage of your CPU: if I understand it correctly, that isnt the load on any one core, it is the total load on your CPU. So if you had 4 core and 2 were at 100%, that would read as 50% load. I may be wrong on that though. Dolphin can use 2 cores for itself and you could use one more assuming you were using LLE on Thread (at your own risk because it can cause issues) so you can only really ever use 2-3 cores. This isnt a limitation of Dolphin necessarily but the way the GC and Wii were designed. The components must talk to each other and share information so there is a limited number of threads that can be created otherwise that information would not be easily sharable.

Increased accuracy has been the goal of the Deve team for more recent versions; which ideally will improve compatability. However, I agree with you that this causes problems for a lot of users. Particularly with games that didn't run well on the Wii to begin with.

I have to use 3.5 to run Harvest Moon: Animal Parade, for example. Because it simply won't function properly with the new DSP; and DX 11 also doesn't really help performance.

This is a game that lags and runs slowly at times even on an actual Wii.

The DSP/FPS syncing being one main area of frustration (Because in this game you're almost never going to be running at 100% Framerate). For this game the old sound emulation code actually works better most of the time (with occasional glitching out that is annoying but better than awful stuttery sound 99% of the time).

Also, reconnecting the Wiimote from saved states does not work well; it always loads as if the joystick was moved to one side; which requires two alt-f5's to fix. The old code reconnects the remote in a way that doesn't cause this problem; which for this game works better.

I have few performance problems with most games using the latest version, even on my old AMD Phenom II processor. However this particular game just doesn't run all that great on the latest version for me, so I keep dolphin 3.5 solely for playing this one game.

3.5 plays Zelda: Twilight Princess like a charm. 4.0.2 unfortunately, cuts 10fps off all of my games. Hyrule is a disaster to run through.

My machine isn't under powered. However, SOMETHING isn't right. All of my settings on 4.0.2 are exactly identical as 3.5, with the exception of not being able to toggle between DX11 and DX9 (It just says Direct3d)